Briana Wofford filed a suit in the Superiro Court of California on October 29th, claiming that her handset was "virtually unusable” after she installed the update to the handset’s operating system.

The revamped phone apparently prone to constant crashes and turned into a "a device with little more use than that of a paper weight".

Wofford’s complaint states: "Plaintiff estimates that after iOS 4 installation, she receives about 20 per cent of the functionality of the device as it behaved before with the earlier iOS 3.x system software and firmware.

“The true fact of the matter ... is that the iOS 4 is a substantial 'downgrade' for earlier iPhone devices and renders many of them virtually useless 'iBricks.' "

News of her action is sure to reignite rather silly rumours that Apple deliberately pushed out a shonky update to its older phones last summer to give a fillip to sales of the latest, greatest iteration of its smartphone, the iPhone 4.

Soon after iOS 4 dropped, Apple rushed out a fix for problems with the earlier version. This included patches for over two security flaws, plus the meta-irritating performance problems with the 3GS and 3G.

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